
Book zlL 



Copyright^ . 



7 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Wtinttotk lectures on die 
Jftotate of Cra&e 



THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MO- 
NOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP. By 
John Graham. Brooks. 

COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM. By 
Hamilton Holt. 

THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC 
RELATIONS. By Albert Shaw. 



COMMERCIALISM AND 
JOURNALISM 



COMMERCIALISM 
AND JOURNALISM 

BY 

HAMILTON HOLT 

MANAGING EDITOR OF THE INDEPENDENT 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1909 



$ 






COPYRIGHT, I9O9, BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published December igog 



<g3;.A252^ ;r 



BARBARA WEINSTOCK 

LECTURES ON THE MORALS 

OF TRADE 

This series will contain essays by 
representative scholars and men of 
affairs dealing with the various phases 
of the moral law in its bearing on 
business life under the new economic 
order, first delivered at the University 
of California on the Weinstock founda- 
tion. 



COMMERCIALISM AND 
JOURNALISM 

IN the United States of America, public 
opinion prevails. It is an axiom of 
the old political economy, as well as of 
the new sociology, that no man, or set 
of men, may with impunity defy public 
opinion; no law can be enforced con- 
trary to its behests ; and even life itself is 
scarcely worth living without its appro- 
bation. Public opinion is the ultimate 
force that controls the destiny of our 
democracy. 

By common consent we editors are 
called the "moulders of public opinion." 
Writing in our easy chairs or making 
suave speeches over the walnuts and wine, 



2 COMMERCIALISM AND 

we take scrupulous care to expatiate on 
this phase of our function. But the real 
question is: who "moulds" us? for as- 
suredly the hand that moulds the editor 
moulds the world. 

I propose to discuss this evening the 
ultimate power in control of our journals. 
And this as you will see implies such vital 
questions as: Are we editors free to say 
what we believe? Do we believe what 
we say ? Do we fool all the people some 
of the time, some of the people all the 
time, or only ourselves ? Is advertising or 
circulation — profits or popularity — our 
secret solicitude ? Or do we follow faith- 
fully the stern daughter of the voice of 
God ? In short, is journalism a profession 
or a business ? 



JOURNALISM 3 

There are almost as many answers to 
these questions as there are people to ask 
them. There are those of us who jubi- 
lantly burst into poetry, singing: — 

" Here shall the press the people's rights maintain, 
Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain." 

On the other hand there are some of 
us quite ready to corroborate from our 
own experience the confessions of one 
New York journalist who wrote : — 

There is no such thing in America as an in- 
dependent press. I am paid for keeping honest 
opinions out of the paper I am connected with. 
If I should allow honest opinions to be printed 
in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four 
hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be 
gone. The business of a New York journalist 
is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, 



4 COMMERCIALISM AND 

to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and 
to sell his country and his race for his daily 
bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich 
men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, 
our lives, our possibilities, are all the property 
of other men. We are intellectual prosti- 
tutes. 

I come to California, therefore, to tell 
you with all sincerity and candor the real 
conditions under which we editors do our 
work, and the forces that help and hinder 
us in the discharge of our duties to so- 
ciety and to the journals that we control 
or that control us. 

And, first, let me give you succinctly 
some idea of the magnitude of the in- 
dustry that we are to discuss. The Census, 
in its latest bulletin on "Printing and 



JOURNALISM $ 

Publishing in the United States/' truly 
and tritely remarks that " Printing occu- 
pies a unique position among industries, 
and in certain aspects excels all others in 
interest, since the printed page has done 
more to advance civilization than any 
other human agency/' 

But not only does the printing industry 
excel all other industries in human inter- 
est, it excels them in the relative progress 
it is making. The latest available figures, 
published in 1905 by the Government, 
show that the capital invested in the pub- 
lishing business had doubled in the pre- 
ceding half decade, despite the fact that 
publishing is almost unique among indus- 
tries in the diffusion of its establishments, 
and in the tenacity with which it still 



6 COMMERCIALISM AND 

clings to competition in an age of combi- 
nation. Since 1850 the whole industry has 
increased over thirty-fold, while all other 
industries have increased only fifteen- 
fold. The number of publications in the 
country, as given, is 21,394. These are 
capitalized at $239,505,949; they em- 
ploy 48,781 salaried officers, and 96,857 
wage-earners. Their aggregate circula- 
tion per issue is 139,939,229; and their 
aggregate number of copies issued during 
the year is 10,325,143,188. They con- 
sume 2,730,000 tons of paper, manu- 
factured from 100,000 acres of timber. 
These 21,394 periodicals receive $145,- 
5 1 7,59 1, or 47 per cent of their receipts, 
from advertising, and $111,298,691, or 
36 per cent of the receipts from sales and 



JOURNALISM 7 

subscriptions. They are divided into 2452 
dailies, of which about one third are is- 
sued in the morning and two thirds in the 
evening; 15,046 weeklies; 2500 month- 
lies, and a few bi-weeklies, semi- weeklies, 
quarterlies, etc. 

The number of these periodicals has 
doubled in the last twenty-five years, but 
at the present moment the monthlies are 
increasing the fastest, next, the weeklies, 
and last, the dailies. The dailies issue 
enough copies to supply every inhabitant 
of the United States with one every fourth 
issue, the weeklies with one every other 
issue, and the monthlies with one copy of 
each issue for nine months of the year. 
One third of all these papers are devoted 
to trade and special interests. The re- 



8 COMMERCIALISM AND 

maining two thirds are devoted to news, 
politics, and family reading. 

Undoubtedly there are many contribu- 
ting causes which have made the periodi- 
cal industry grow faster than all other 
industries of the country. I shall mention 
only six. 

First. The cheapening of the postal, 
telephone, and telegraph rates, and the 
introduction of such conveniences as the 
rural free delivery, so that news and gen- 
eral information can be collected and 
distributed cheaply and with dispatch. 

Second. The introduction of the lino- 
type machines, rapid and multiple presses, 
and other mechanical devices, which 
vastly increase the output of every shop 
that adopts them. 



JOURNALISM 9 

Third. The photo-process of illustrat- 
ing, which threatens to make wood- and 
steel-engraving a lost art, and which, on 
account of its cheapness and attractive- 
ness, has made possible literally thousands 
of pictured publications that never could 
have existed before. 

Fourth. The growing diffusion of edu- 
cation throughout the country. Our high 
schools, to say nothing of our colleges and 
universities, alone graduate 125,000 pu- 
pils a year, — all of them fit objects of 
solicitude to the newsdealer and subscrip- 
tion-agent. 

Fifth. The use of wood pulp in the 
manufacture of paper, by which the 
largest item in the cost of production 
has been greatly diminished. 



io COMMERCIALISM AND 

Sixth. The phenomenal growth of 
advertising. 

I shall not attempt to amplify the first 
five of these causes responsible for the 
unparalleled growth of periodical litera- 
ture. But the sixth I shall discuss at some 
length, for advertising is by all odds the 
greatest factor in the case. 

In olden times the dailies carried only 
a very little advertising — a few legal no- 
tices, an appeal for the return of a strayed 
cow, or a house for sale. It is only within 
the past fifty years that advertising as a 
means of bringing together the producer 
and consumer began. And, curiously 
enough, the men who first began to ap- 
preciate the immense selling-power that 
lay in the printed advertisement were 



JOURNALISM ii 

"makers," or "fakirs," of patent medi- 
cines. The beginning of modern adver- 
tising is in fact synchronous with the 
beginnings of the patent-medicine busi- 
ness. 

Even magazine advertising, which is 
now the most profitable and efficacious 
of all kinds, did not originate until 
February, i860, when "The Atlantic 
Monthly " printed its first " ad." " Har- 
per's " was founded simply as a medium 
for selling the books issued from the 
Franklin Square House, and all adver- 
tisements from outsiders were declined. 
George P. Rowell, the dean of advertis- 
ing agents, in his amusing autobiography, 
tells how Harper & Brothers in the early 
seventies refused an offer of $18, 000 from 



12 COMMERCIALISM AND 

the Howe Sewing Machine Company for 
a year's use of the last page of the maga- 
zine; and Mr. Rowell adds that he had 
this information from a member of the 
firm, of whose veracity he had no doubt, 
though at the same sitting he heard Mr. 
Harper tell another man about the pe- 
culiarities of that section of Long Island 
where the Harpers originated, assuring 
him the ague prevailed there to such an 
extent that all his ancestors had quinine 
put into their graves to keep the corpses 
from shaking the sand off. 

Before the Civil War it is said that the 
largest advertisement that ever appeared 
in a newspaper was given by the E. & T. 
Fairbanks Company, and published in the 
New York "Tribune," which charged 



JOURNALISM 13 

$3000 for it. Now the twenty large de- 
partment stores alone of New York City- 
spend, so it is estimated, $4,000,000 a year 
for advertising, while one Chicago house 
is said to appropriate $500,000 a year for 
publicity in order to sell $15,000,000 
worth of goods. Those products which 
are believed to be advertised to the extent 
of $750,000 or more a year include the 
Uneeda Biscuits, Royal Baking Powder, 
Grape Nuts, Force, Fairy Soap and Gold 
Dust, Swift's Hams and Bacon, the Ral- 
ston Mills food-products, Sapolio, Ivory 
Soap, and Armour's Extract of Beef. The 
railroads are also very large general ad- 
vertisers. In 1903 they spent over a mil- 
lion and a quarter dollars in publicity, 
though this did not include free passes for 



i 4 COMMERCIALISM AND 

editors, who, I may parenthetically re- 
mark, thanks to the recent Hepburn Act, 
are now forced to pay their way across 
the continent just like ordinary American 
citizens. 

It is computed that there are about 
20,000 general advertisers in the coun- 
try and about a million local advertisers. 
Between the two, $145,517,591 was 
spent in 1905 to get their products be- 
fore the public. The Census gives only 
the totals and does not classify the adver- 
tising that appears in the dailies, weeklies, 
and monthlies. The Rev. Cyrus Town- 
send Brady, however, has made a very 
illuminating study 1 of the advertising and 
circulation conditions of 3 9 of the leading 

1 The Critic , August, 1905. 



JOURNALISM 15 

monthly magazines published in the 
United States. The first thing that struck 
his attention was the fact that candid and 
courteous replies to his requests for infor- 
mation were vouchsafed by all the pub- 
lishers — quite a contrast to what would 
have happened from a similar inquiry a 
generation ago. He next discovered that 
these 39 magazines, which had an aggre- 
gate circulation of over 1 0,000,000 copies 
per month, could put a full-page adver- 
tisement into the hands of 600,000,000 
readers, or seven times the population of 
the United States, for the astonishingly 
insignificant sum of $12,000, or for two 
thousandths of a cent for each reader. 

The amount paid by the purchasers of 
these 39 magazines was $15,000,000, for 



1 6 COMMERCIALISM AND 

which they received 36,000 pages of text 
and pictures, and 25,000 pages of adver- 
tisements. Magazine advertisements are 
better written and better illustrated than 
the reading matter. This is because they 
are of no use to the man who pays for 
their insertion if they do not attract 
attention, whereas the contributor's in- 
terest in his article after its acceptance is 
mostly nominal. That is, the advertiser 
must win several thousand readers; the 
contributor has to win but one editor. 

These 39 magazines were found to 
receive $18,000,000 a year from their 
advertisements and $15,000,000 from 
their sales and subscriptions. This shows 
that in monthly magazines the receipts 
from advertising and subscriptions are 



JOURNALISM 17 

about the same. In weeklies the receipts 
from advertising are often four times as 
much as the receipts from sales and sub- 
scriptions, while in the dailies the pro- 
portion is even greater. The owner of 
one of the leading evening papers in 
New York told me that 90 per cent of 
its total receipts came from advertis- 
ing. From whatever standpoint you 
approach the subject, it is the advertise- 
ments that are becoming the most im- 
portant factor in publishing. Indeed, 
some students in Yale University carried 
this out to its logical conclusion last 
autumn by launching a college daily sup- 
ported wholly by the revenues from ad- 
vertisements. They put a free copy every 
morning on the door-mat before each 



1 8 COMMERCIALISM AND 

student's room. If it were not for the 
postal prohibition many dailies and other 
periodicals would make money by being 
given away. 

Thus you see that if there were no 
advertisements and the publishers had to 
rely on their sales and subscriptions for 
their receipts, the monthlies would have 
to double their price, and the weeklies 
and dailies multiply theirs from four to 
ten times. This advantage to the reading 
public must certainly be put to the credit 
of advertising. 

The preponderance of advertising 
over subscription receipts, however, is of 
comparatively recent occurrence. Thirty 
years ago the receipts from subscriptions 
and sales of all the American periodicals 



JOURNALISM 19 

exceeded those from advertising by $1 1,- 
000,000; twenty years ago they were 
about equal; and to-day the advertising 
exceeds the subscriptions and sales by 
$35,000,000. 

In 1880 the total amount of advertis- 
ing was equivalent to the expenditure 
of 78 cents for every inhabitant in the 
United States ; in 1 905 it was $ 1 .79. On 
the other hand, the per capita value of 
subscriptions has increased hardly at all. 
The reason of this is the fall of the price 
of subscriptions. We take more papers 
but pay less — a cent a copy. Compara- 
tively few buy the New York " Evening 
Post " for three cents. This is all the more 
remarkable, because advertising is the 
most sensitive feature of a most sensitive 



20 COMMERCIALISM AND 

business and is sure to suffer first in any 
industrial crisis or depression. 

No wonder that the man who realizes 
the significance of all these figures and 
the trend disclosed by them is coming 
to look upon the editorial department 
of the newspaper as merely a necessary 
means of giving a literary tone to the 
publication, thus helping business men 
get their wares before the proper people. 
Mr. Trueman A. DeWeese, in his re- 
cent significant volume, " Practical Pub- 
licity," thinks that this is about what Mr. 
Curtis, the proprietor of " The Ladies' 
Home Journal," would say if he ven- 
tured to say what he really thought : — 

It is not my primary purpose to edify, 
entertain, or instruct a million women with 



JOURNALISM 21 

poems, stones, and fashion-hints. Mr. Bok 
may think it is. He is merely the innocent 
victim of a harmless delusion, and he draws 
a salary for being deluded. To be frank and 
confidential with you, " The Ladies' Home 
Journal " is published expressly for the ad- 
vertisers. The reason I can put something in 
the magazines that will catch the artistic eye 
and make glad the soul of the reader is be- 
cause a good advertiser finds that it pays to 
give me $4000 a page, or $6 an agate line, 
for advertising space. 

Yes, the tremendous power of adver- 
tising is the most significant thing about 
modern journalism. It is advertising that 
has enabled the press to outdistance its 
old rivals, the pulpit and the platform, 
and thus become the chief ally of public 
opinion. It has also economized business 



n COMMERCIALISM AND 

by bringing the producer and consumer 
into more direct contact, and in many 
cases has actually abolished the middle 
man and drummer. 

As an example of the passing of the 
salesman, due to advertising, " The Sat- 
urday Evening Post" of Philadelphia, in 
its interesting series of articles on modern 
advertising exploits, recently told the 
story of how the N. H. Fairbanks Co. 
made a test of the relative value of ad- 
vertising and salesmen. A belt of coun- 
ties in Illinois were set aside for the ex- 
periment, in which the company was 
selling a certain brand of soap by sales- 
men and making a fair profit. It was 
proposed that the identical soap be put up 
under another brand and advertised in a 



JOURNALISM 23 

conservative way in this particular sec- 
tion, and at the same time the salesmen 
should continue their efforts with the 
old soap. Within six months the adver- 
tised brand was outselling its rival at the 
rate of $8000 a year. 

The Douglas Shoe is another product 
that is sold entirely by general advertis- 
ing. So successful has the business be- 
come that the company has established 
retail stores all over the country, in which 
only men's shoes are sold at $3.50 a pair. 
Now other shoe-manufacturers have 
adopted this plan, and in most of our 
large cities there are several chains of 
rival retail shoe stores. 

But all the advertising is not in the 
advertising columns. A United States 



24 COMMERCIALISM AND 

Senator said last winter that, when a bill 
he introduced in the Senate was up for 
discussion, the publicity given it through 
an article he wrote for " The Independ- 
ent " had more to do with its passage 
than anything he said in its behalf on 
the floor of the upper house ; — that is, 
his article was a paying advertisement 
of the bill. And in mentioning the in- 
cident to you, I give " The Independ- 
ent " a good advertisement. 

Universities advertise themselves in 
many and devious ways — sometimes by 
the remarkable utterances of their pro- 
fessors, as at Chicago ; sometimes by the 
victories of their athletes, as at Yale ; 
and sometimes by the treatment of their 
women students, as at Wesleyan. But 






JOURNALISM 2$ 

perhaps the most extraordinary case of 
university advertising that has come to 
my attention was when, not so very long 
ago, a certain state institution of the 
Middle West bought editorials in the 
country press at advertising rates for 
the sole purpose of influencing the state 
legislature to make them a larger appro- 
priation. In other words the University 
authorities took money forced from a 
reluctant legislature to make the legisla- 
ture give them still more money. 

The charitable organizations are now 
beginning to advertise in the public press 
for donations, and even churches are fall- 
ing into line. The Rev. Charles Stelzle, 
one of the most conspicuous leaders of 
the Presbyterian Church, has just pub- 



26 COMMERCIALISM AND 

lished a book entitled " Principles of 
Successful Church Advertising/ ' in 
which he says : — 

From all parts of the world there come sto- 
ries of losses in [church] membership, either 
comparative or actual. In the face of this, 
dare the Church sit back and leave untried 
a single method which may win men to 
Christ, provided that this method be legiti- 
mate ? . . . The Church should advertise be- 
cause of the greatness of its commission, " Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel 
to every creature." To fulfill this command 
does not mean that Christian men are to con- 
fine themselves to the methods of those who 
first heard the commission. 

The question whether advertising pays 
will never be known in the individual 
case, for, like marriage, you can't tell till 



JOURNALISM 27 

you try it. But in the aggregate, also 
like marriage, there is no doubt of its 
value. The tremendous power of persist- 
ent advertising to carry an idea of al- 
most any kind into the minds of the 
people and stamp it there, is amazing. 
How many "Sunny Jims," for instance, 
are there in this audience ? If there are 
none, it is singular ; for learned judges 
have referred to him in their decisions, 
sermons have been preached, and vol- 
umes written about him, though it took 
a million dollars and two years of per- 
sistent work to introduce this modern 
"Mark Tapley" to the public. Have 
you a little fairy in your home ? Do you 
live in Spotless Town ? Do you use any 
of the 5J varieties ? " There's a reason." 



28 COMMERCIALISM AND 

" That 's all." Formerly a speaker used a 
quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare 
when he wanted to strike a common 
chord. Nowadays he works in an allu- 
sion to some advertising phrase, and is 
sure of instant and universal recognition. 
The Socialists and other Utopian crit- 
ics, who are supposed to drill to the bed- 
rock of questions, have looked upon ad- 
vertising as essentially a parasite upon the 
production and distribution of wealth. 
They tell us that in the good time com- 
ing, advertising will be relegated to the 
scrap-heap of outworn social machinery, 
along with war, race prejudice, million- 
aires, the lower education of women, 
and other things of an undesirable na- 
ture. This has not been the experience, 



JOURNALISM a 9 

however, of those " sinister offenders " 
who have come nearest to the coopera- 
tive ownership of wealth in this coun- 
try — I refer of course to "The Trusts." 
When the breakfast food trust was formed, 
one of the chief reasons for the combi- 
nation was that the rival companies thus 
hoped to save the cost of advertising that 
had hitherto been required when they 
sold their food-stuffs in competition with 
each other. But they very soon found 
that their sales fell off after they stopped 
advertising, and they kept on falling off 
until the advertising was resumed. This 
teaches us that the American people 
have not enough gumption to buy even 
the staple products they need except 
through the stimulus of hypnotic sugges- 



30 COMMERCIALISM AND 

tion — which is nothing but another 
name for advertising. Even such a be- 
nevolent institution as a great life insur- 
ance company could not get much new 
business on its own merits. If all the 
money now spent on agents' commis- 
sions, advertising, yellow-dog funds, and 
palatial offices were devoted sacredly to 
the reduction of the rates of insurance, 
probably fewer rather than more persons 
would insure. The American people have 
to pay to be told what is good for them, 
otherwise they would soon abolish edi- 
tors, professors, and all the rest of us who 
get paid for preaching what others prac- 
tice. 

Now while advertising pays the con- 
sumer who buys, the advertiser who sells, 



JOURNALISM 31 

and the publisher who brings both to- 
gether, there is a limit to the amount of 
advertising which can be " carried' ' by a 
certain amount of reading matter. In 
newspapers we see the result of this in 
the vast Sunday editions, with sometimes 
fifty or a hundred detachable pages. In 
the magazines the case is different. Inter- 
esting and attractive as magazine adver- 
tising has become — it certainly should 
be so, considering the advertisers pay 
good money to put it before the people 
— it is not enough alone to sell a maga- 
zine, and when it forms more than half 
or two thirds of the number the issue be- 
comes too bulky and the value of the ad- 
vertising pages themselves decreases. In 
making sandwiches the ham must not be 



32 COMMERCIALISM AND 

sliced too thin. That necessitates start- 
ing a new magazine ; and so we find from 
three to a dozen periodicals issued by the 
same house, often similar in character and 
apparently rivals. This accounts for the 
multiplication of magazines. It is not a 
yearning for more love stories. 

Thus you see advertising has made 
possible the great complex papers and 
magazines of the day with their corps of 
trained editors, reporters, and advertis- 
ing writers, in numbers and intellectual 
calibre comparable with the faculty of a 
good-sized university. Advertising makes 
it possible to issue a paper far below the 
cost of manufacturing — all to the benefit 
of the consumer. So far as I know there 
is not an important daily, weekly, or 



JOURNALISM 33 

monthly in America that can be manu- 
factured at the selling price. But, on the 
other hand, with the growth of advertis- 
ing a department had to be created in 
every paper for its handling. As adver- 
tising still further increased, rival papers 
competed for it and the professional 
solicitor became a necessary adjunct of 
every paper, until now the advertising 
department is the most important branch 
of the publication business, for it is the 
real source of the profits. Because the 
solicitor seeks the advertiser, and, there- 
fore, is in the position of one asking for 
favors, he puts himself under obligations 
to the advertiser, and so in his keenness 
to bring in revenue for his paper, he is 
often tempted to ask the aid of the edi- 



34 COMMERCIALISM AND 

tor in appeasing the advertiser. Thus the 
advertiser tends to control the policy of 
the paper. 

And this is the explanation of the con- 
dition that confronts most publications 
to-day. By throwing the preponderating 
weight of commercialism into the scales 
of production, advertising is at the pres- 
ent moment by far the greatest menace 
to the disinterested practice of a profes- 
sion upon which the diffusion of intelli- 
gence most largely depends. If jour- 
nalism is no longer a profession, but a 
commercial enterprise, it is due to the 
growth of advertising, and nothing else. 

There was a time, not so very long ago, 
when journalism was on the verge of de- 
veloping a system of professional ethics, 



JOURNALISM 35 

based on other considerations than those 
of the cash register. Then a* Greeley, 
Bowles, Medill, Dana, or Raymond, with 
a hand-press and a printer's devil, could 
start a paper as good as any university con- 
sisting of Mark Hopkins, a student, and 
a log. In those days the universal ques- 
tion was, " What does old Greeley have 
to say?" because old Greeley was the 
ultimate source of his own utterances. 
Imagine the rage he would have flown 
into if any one had dared insinuate that 
the advertisers dictated a single sentence 
in "The Tribune" ! But now the adver- 
tisers are aggressive. They are becoming 
organized. They look upon the giving of 
an advertisement to a publisher as some- 
thing of a favor, for which they have a 



36 COMMERCIALISM AND 

right to expect additional courtesies in 
the news and editorial columns. 

Advertising is also responsible for the 
fact that our papers are no longer organs 
but organizations. The individuality of 
the great editor, once supreme, has be- 
come less and less a power, till finally it 
vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. 
To show you how far the editor has re- 
ceded into public obscurity, it is only 
necessary to try to recall the portrayal of 
a modern editor in a recent play. Stage 
lawyers, stage physicians, and stage 
preachers abound ; when you think of 
them your mind calls up a very definite 
image. But no one has yet attempted to 
portray the typical editor, and it is doubt- 
ful if the populace would recognize him 



JOURNALISM 37 

if he were portrayed, for the modern 
editor is a mystery. 

Despite the editorial impersonality 
which controls modern newspapers, the 
editors still touch life in more points than 
any other class of men. And for this rea- 
son, if for no other, it is important to 
know the limitations under which they 
work. I leave aside the limitations that 
come from within the editor himself; for 
manifestly ignorance, prejudice, venality 
and the like, in the editor are in no wise 
different from similar faults in other men. 

There are just two temptations, how- 
ever, peculiar to the editor, that tend to 
limit his freedom : first, the fear of the ad- 
vertisers, and second, the fear of the sub- 
scribers. The advertisers when offended 



38 COMMERCIALISM AND 

stop their advertisements; the readers, 
their subscriptions. The editor who is 
afraid to offend both must make a color- 
less paper indeed. He must discuss only 
those things about which every one agrees 
or nobody cares. The attitude of such 
an editor to his readers is, " Gape, sinner, 
and swallow," and to his advertisers, as 
Senator Brandegee said at a recent Yale 
Commencement in regard to a proposed 
Rockefeller bequest, " Bring on your 
tainted money/' As a rule, the yellows 
are most in awe of the mob, while the 
so-called respectables fear the advertising 
interests. 

Now let me take up in some detail 
the influences brought to bear upon us 
which tend to make us swerve from the 



JOURNALISM 39 

straight and narrow path. I invite your 
attention first of all to the Press Agent, 
that indispensable adjunct of all projects 
that have something to gain or to fear 
from publicity. I have seen the claim 
made in print, though doubtless it is a 
press agent's story, that there are ten 
thousand press agents in the city of New 
York, — that is, men and women em- 
ployed to boom people and enterprises 
in the papers and magazines. You are 
familiar with the theatrical press agent, 
the most harmless, jovial, inventive, and 
resourceful of his kind. He is the one 
who writes the articles signed by Grand 
Opera singers which appear in the maga- 
zines. It is he who gets up stories about 
Miss " Pansy Pinktoes," her milk-baths, 



4 o COMMERCIALISM AND 

the loss of her diamonds, the rich men 
who follow her. It is he who got for 
me an interview with a Filipino chief at 
Coney Island three summers ago, whose 
unconventional remarks and original 
philosophy on America and the inhab- 
itants thereof startled me no less than our 
readers. 

When the press agent has no news, 
he manufactures it. The readers of the 
New York papers the other day read 
that a prominent Socialist, who occu- 
pied a box in the theatre where a play 
was given in which Socialism is attacked, 
stood up and offered to harangue the 
audience between the acts. The actor 
who played the role of the wicked capi- 
talist came on the stage and invited the 



JOURNALISM 41 

audience to vote whether they cared to 
hear the Socialist or him. The audience 
thereupon voted both down. But the 
management the next Sunday evening 
very kindly offered the use of the stage 
for a debate on Socialism, to which the 
leading Socialists and anti-Socialists of 
the city were invited. The meeting was 
a great success, and all the reporters 
in town were present, just as by some 
singular coincidence they happened to 
be on the first night. 

One of our most successful operatic 
managers — impressario, I believe, is the 
more correct appellation — was about to 
produce the opera of " Salome," which 
had been taken off the rival stage after 
its first performance, on the assumption 



42 COMMERCIALISM AND 

that New York was shocked. The singer 
was not only to sing the part, if one can 
sing a Strauss opera, but was also to dance 
it. Finally, about a week before the 
opera was produced, a new soprano was 
engaged to sing another role hitherto 
taken by the prospective Salome. In- 
stantly the dread headlines on all the 
front pages of the metropolitan press an- 
nounced that Miss Garden would resign 
before Madame Cavalieri should sing in 
any of her roles. Mr. Hammerstein's 
" eyes twinkled," as the reporters be- 
sieged him. He said he guessed he could 
untangle matters. Out of the kindness of 
his heart he had thought the rehearsals 
of " Salome " were too fatiguing for 
Miss Garden, and so got assistance for 



JOURNALISM 43 

her. After a three or four days' operatic 
war, in which literally columns of print- 
ers' ink was shed, the entente cordiale was 
resumed, and the song-birds became 
doves of peace again. The New York 
" Evening Post " printed the next day 
an editorial entitled, " Genius in Adver- 
tising " ; and a week later the opera, or 
rather the song and dance of " Salome," 
was given, with seats selling at ten dollars 
apiece, and "standing room only" signs 
at the box-office. 

This desire for publicity on the part 
of the histrionic profession goes so far, 
that often absolute fakes are sent out to 
the poor, unsuspecting editor. Here is 
a statement that was printed, let us hope 
in good faith, in one of the Brooklyn 



44 COMMERCIALISM AND 

papers not long ago. It referred to tne 
leading lady in a popular stock com- 
pany. 

Miss S. has a remarkably fine collection of 
miniatures painted on ivory. Her attention 
was attracted to them several years ago by a 
miniature of one of her ancestors, painted by 
Edward Greene Malbone, which came into 
her possession. The delicate quality of the 
painter's art that was of necessity lavished 
upon the ivory pleased her as an amateur and 
she began to collect. Miss S. has haunted the 
antique shops of Manhattan and Brooklyn 
during the few leisure moments that came to 
her, in her search after miniatures. She now 
owns something like one hundred examples 
of famous miniatures. One of her greatest 
treasures is a portrait of John Dray, by that 
master-painter of miniatures, Richard Cos- 
way. 



JOURNALISM 45 

The publication of this article brought 
such a number of requests from the 
friends of Miss S. to see her collection, 
that the ingenious press agent was obliged 
to invent and publish another fabrication 
— this time of a midnight robbery in 
which the collection disappeared. This 
shameless story was told me by the press 
agent himself, and he gave me from his 
scrap-book the fake clipping I have just 
read. 

Similarly the imitation riots, and pro- 
tests from delegations of negroes, where 
Thomas Dixon's Ku-Klux play, " The 
Clansman," was to be produced, were 
often due to the initiative of the enter- 
prising press agent — at least so he told 
me. 



46 COMMERCIALISM AND 

I would not have you think, however, 
that the press bureau is not in many in- 
stances a perfectly legitimate institution, 
and cannot be used with all propriety 
by religious, reform, political, and other 
organizations. The woman's suffrage 
movement, for instance, has a well- 
equipped and organized bureau; while 
the two great political parties during 
campaign times have sent out for many 
years news-articles and editorials of 
great value to the country and partisan 
press. 

Perhaps the most efficacious press bu- 
reau of the legitimate kind is that of the 
Christian Scientists. Every time an editor 
prints anything derogatory to the Rev. 
Mary Baker G. Eddy, or her influential 



JOURNALISM 47 

cult, a suave and professionally happy 
gentleman immediately sends his card 
into the sanctum, and, holding the offen- 
sive clipping in one hand, together with 
a brief and well-written reply, says with 
the utmost courtesy : — 

" Inasmuch, my good sir, as you 
deemed it worth while to devote so much 
of your valuable space to spreading broad- 
cast before your intelligent audience an 
error about Christian Science, I feel sure 
that your sense of justice will make plain 
to you the privilege of giving us space to 
demonstrate the real truth of the matter." 

To the editor with a conscience — and 
some of us still have the vestiges of one 
— this is a hard argument to evade; and 
as a result Christian Science gets twice as 



48 COMMERCIALISM AND 

much notice in the papers as it would 
were there no smiling press agent to fol- 
low up every unfavorable reference, no 
matter how obscure the publication. The 
next time the editor wants to point a jest 
at the expense of Christian Science, he 
thinks twice and then substitutes some 
other cause that does not employ an edi- 
torial rectifier. 

But perhaps the best use of a publicity 
bureau was made recently by the street- 
railway company of Roanoke, Virginia, 
and the water company of Scranton, 
Pennsylvania. Both of these companies 
had become very unpopular, one as a 
result of poor street-car service, and the 
other on account of a typhoid epidemic 
supposed to have been started from the 



JOURNALISM 49 

pollution of the company's reservoir. 
Both companies appropriated a good sum 
of money, hired a press agent, and bought 
advertising space in the local papers every 
day for a month or more. These adver- 
tisements gave the companies' side of the 
case with such candor and convincing 
fairness that they soon became the talk 
of the town, personal letters were written 
to the papers about them, and the hos- 
tility toward them very quickly turned 
to a feeling of good- will. It pays to take 
the public into your confidence . 

And now the staid " Rail-Road Age- 
Gazette " has sounded the call for a great 
press agent to arise and stem the growing 
public hostility to the railroads. The 
" Age-Gazette " did not use the phrase 



So COMMERCIALISM AND 

"press agent/' as the appellation has not 
as yet come into its full dignity. It em- 
ployed the more euphonious term " Rail- 
road Diplomatist/' Still, high-sounding 
titles have their use, as when some of my 
brother editors call their "reporters" 
" Special Commissioners," and their for- 
eign correspondents " Journalistic Am- 
bassadors." 

We had a Peace and Arbitration Con- 
gress in New York two years ago. Being 
chairman of the Press Committee, I em- 
ployed a firm of press agents to get for us 
the maximum amount of publicity. As 
a result we received over ten thousand 
clippings from the papers of the United 
States alone. I do not mean to claim that 
the Congress would not have been ex- 



JOURNALISM 51 

tensively noticed without the deft work 
of the agents; but they unquestionably 
helped a great deal. The newspapers 
welcome them when they represent such 
well-known philanthropic institutions 
as the Peace Society, the Society for 
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and 
the People's Institute, because the copy 
they "turn in" requires little or no fur- 
ther editing before it is sent to the printer. 
But when they are employed to promote 
financial ventures, wars on labor unions, 
anti-municipal ownership campaigns, or 
other private and class interests, then the 
editors discount what they provide and 
they actually do more harm than good to 
the cause they are intended to promote. 
Press agents, however, are sometimes 



52 COMMERCIALISM AND 

enabled to get illegitimate matter into 
our best papers. I recall to your memory 
the reports favorable to the companies 
sent out during the great insurance inves- 
tigations in New York. " Collier's " has 
told the whole story. 1 One of the agents 
employed testified on the witness-stand 
that a great insurance company agreed to 
pay a dollar a line for what he could get 
into the papers. He made his own ar- 
rangements with the journals that took 
his stuff, and the difference between the 
price he had to pay and the dollar a line 
he got from the insurance company was 
to be his private rake-off. He succeeded 
in securing the publication of six dis- 
patches of about two hundred and fifty 

1 Collier's, Nov. n, 1905. 



JOURNALISM 53 

words, in such well-known newspapers as 
the St. Paul "Pioneer Press/' the Boston 
"Herald/' theToledo "Blade," the Buf- 
falo "Courier," the Florida "Times- 
Union," the Atlanta "Constitution," 
and the Wilmington "News." It is only- 
fair to state, however, that there was 
nothing in the evidence to show whether 
the papers went into the arrangement on 
a business basis, or were fooled into think- 
ing the dispatches they published were 
genuine reports of the proceedings before 
the committee. 

Examples of the use of press agents for 
both legitimate and illegitimate purposes 
could be extended almost indefinitely. 
The Standard Oil Company, I under- 
stand, now issues all its manifestoes to 



54 COMMERCIALISM AND 

the public through a trained press-repre- 
sentative; and the fight against Messrs. 
Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison, in 
the Buck Stove controversy, was con- 
ducted with the aid of a press bureau, as 
one of the lawyers in the case informed 
me. Whenever such a question comes 
before the people as the choice between 
the Nicaragua and Panama routes for 
the interoceanic canal, a press bureau is 
usually an important factor in the cam- 
paign. The big navy craze and the Japan 
war cry can hardly be accounted for 
except on the theory that it has been 
for somebody's interest to agitate them 
through the press. Whenever the Naval 
appropriation bill comes before Congress, 
the Far-Eastern war-clouds threaten in 



JOURNALISM 55 

thousands of newspaper sanctums, while 
all of us shudder at the danger of war, 
for the benefit of ordnance manufac- 
turers, battleship builders, and every in- 
cipient " Fighting Bob" who hoj^some 
day to command another American Ar- 
mada on its gastronomic voyage around 
the world. 

Fortunately none of our papers are 
subsidized by the government itself, as is 
so often the case with the semi-official 
organs of Europe. Nor are any of our 
papers directly in the pay of foreign gov- 
ernments, though the espousal of the in- 
famous reactionary regime in Russia by 
some of them is at least open to suspicion. 
The danger of manufactured public opin- 
ion in this country comes not from gov- 



$6 COMMERCIALISM AND 

ernments. Even the political parties are 
losing the allegiance of the press. The 
days when the Republican organs told 
the people the worst Republican was 
better than the best Democrat, and the 
Democratic papers said the same about 
the Republicans, have happily passed, 
never to return again, though the spirit 
still lingers in the organs of the Socialist, 
Populist, and Prohibition parties. The 
growth of the great politically-inde- 
pendent press is one of the most hopeful 
signs of the times. 

But we have only jumped out of the 
frying-pan of politics into the fire of 
commercialism, and the fight of the fu- 
ture will therefore be to extricate our- 
selves from the fetters of commercialism, 



JOURNALISM 57 

just as we have already broken away 
from the bonds of party politics. 

But the press agent has come to stay. 
Indeed, his business has now assumed 
such proportions that the profession of 
anti-press agent will doubtless soon come 
into existence. I know already of one 
gentleman in New York whose aid has 
been invoked when people want things 
kept out of the papers. On more than 
one occasion he has prevented good spicy 
bits of scandal from seeing the light; 
though in his case I can aver that it was 
his personal influence with the editors, 
rather than any improper lubricant, that 
kept the papers silent. 

Now let me turn from the press agent 
to the advertiser as a twister of editorial 



58 COMMERCIALISM AND 

opinion. Here let me say at once, and 
with all emphasis, that the vast majority 
of advertisements are not only honest 
but dependable. Leaving out of account 
a few stock phrases which deceive no- 
body, such as "the most for the money," 
" the cheapest in the market," etc., what 
is said about the goods to be sold is not 
in the least overdrawn. I have taken the 
pains to go over the advertising columns 
of the leading papers and periodicals of 
New York during the month of Febru- 
ary, and, with the exception of a few 
medical, financial, and perhaps real-estate 
advertisements, I could find absolutely 
nothing that on the face of it seemed 
fraudulent, and very little that was mis- 
leading. The advertisers have at last 



JOURNALISM 59 

come to realize that for the long run, 
whatever the rule may be for the short 
run, it does not pay to overstate the qual- 
ities of their merchandise. You can now 
order your purchases by mail from the 
advertising pages of any reputable pub- 
lication about as safely as over the counter 
of a store. At all events the phenomenal 
growth of the mail-order houses and 
their sales through advertising, lend 
strength to this opinion. On the 15th 
of March, 1909, a single Chicago mail- 
order house sent to the Post Office six 
million catalogues, weighing four hun- 
dred and fifty tons, and all were to be 
distributed within a week. 

Many periodicals now claim that they 
will not take advertisements that look 



6o COMMERCIALISM AND 

fraudulent or even misleading. Some 
papers, like the London "Times," have 
a guaranteed list of advertisements which 
they have investigated and vouch for, 
though naturally the advertisers have to 
pay extra for the guarantee. 

" The Sunday School Times " printed, 
several weeks ago, a long list of secular 
papers that were " going dry/' as so 
many of our Southern states. The fact 
that our best periodicals no longer accept 
liquor advertisements is another one of 
the encouraging signs of the coming of 
the new journalism. 

The vigorous fight that " The Ladies' 
Home Journal" and " Collier's" waged 
against the patent-medicine concerns is 
too fresh in the public memory to need re- 



JOURNALISM 61 

counting here. The two pictures printed 
cheek by jowl in "The Ladies' Home 
Journal/' — one, of the tombstone above 
the mortal remains of Lydia E. Pinkham, 
whose inscription showed that she had 
been dead since 1883, and the other an 
advertisement representing Lydia in 
1905, sitting in her laboratory at Lynn, 
Massachusetts, engrossed in assuaging the 
sufferings of ailing womanhood, — these 
are eloquent of the type of fraud perpe- 
trated through the press upon a gullible 
public. 

Similarly, in the negro papers the 
favorite advertisements are those that 
claim to straighten kinky hair and bleach 
complexions — all fakes, of course. Per- 
haps the most fraudulent advertisements, 



62 COMMERCIALISM AND 

however, are those which purpose to sell 
mines in Brazil, Mexico, Alaska, or 
wherever else the investor is unlikely to 
go. These offer their shares often as low 
as ten cents each, and guarantee fabulous 
profits. I have a college classmate who is 
extensively interested in Mexican mines, 
and he tells me that literally 99 per cent 
of all the mining companies that float their 
shares through advertisements are pure, 
or rather impure, swindles. I am not in 
the least surprised, for I know how many 
letters come to a financial editor from 
the dupes of these slick mine promoters, 
asking advice as to how they can get 
their money back. 

The most demoralizing advertisements 
are those paid for by loan-sharks, clairvoy- 



JOURNALISM 63 

ants, medical quacks, and the votaries of 
vice. The New York " Herald" has re- 
cently stopped printing its vicious per- 
sonals. It also refuses fortune-tellers the 
hospitality of its columns, though it is not 
so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies 
and patent medicines. How many papers 
still publish the advertisement of Mrs. 
Laudanum's soothing syrup for babies ? 
When you remember that the proprie- 
tary medicine concerns have been accus- 
tomed to spend forty million dollars a 
year, which is distributed among the 
papers of the land, you can see that it re- 
quires considerable financial independ- 
ence for a publisher to forego a taste of 
their patronage. 

It is a curious fact that, aside from the 



64 COMMERCIALISM AND 

country weeklies, the papers most plen- 
tifully besprinkled with medical adver- 
tisements are the yellow journals, the 
religious weeklies, the socialistic and 
other propaganda organs, and in general 
those which preach most vociferously 
reform and the brotherhood of man. 

The danger from the advertising col- 
umns is not, as I have said, that the ad- 
vertisements misrepresent the goods, but 
that the terms on which they are so- 
licited tend to commercialize the whole 
tone of the paper and make the editor 
afraid to say what he believes. The ad- 
vertiser is coming more and more to look 
on his patronage as a favor, and he sel- 
dom hesitates to withdraw his advertise- 
ment if anything appears that may injure 



JOURNALISM 65 

his business or interfere with his personal 
fad or political ambition. 

Let me give you some examples of 
the withdrawal of advertisements to pun- 
ish too daring and independent editors. 

A few weeks ago the paper which, in 
my opinion, has the ablest editorial page 
in the country lost some very valuable 
musical advertising because it had pub- 
lished letters of a decidedly compromis- 
ing nature, written by a man high in the 
musical world to a lady who was suing 
him for damages. Another paper, which 
many consider the brightest in America, 
discharged its dramatic critic after a the- 
atrical firm had taken out all their ad- 
vertising. But strange to say, as soon as 
a new critic was engaged, the advertising 



66 COMMERCIALISM AND 

was forthwith resumed. I refrain from 
giving the name of this newspaper be- 
cause one brave and witty little weekly- 
published the story with names and dates, 
and is now being sued for libel. 

"Life" states that in Cincinnati, 
lately, every theatrical advertisement in 
all other newspapers carried this line : — 

" We do not advertise in * The Times- 
Star/" 

The paralyzing power of advertising 
is again exemplified in the case of a New 
York evening paper which was so much 
interested in the popularization of bi- 
cycles that it organized the first bicycle 
parade ever held in the city. Just be- 
fore the day of the parade, however, it 
printed an article telling the people that 



JOURNALISM 67 

it cost only some fifteen or twenty dollars 
to manufacture bicycles that sold at from 
seventy-five to one hundred and twenty- 
five dollars. Instantly all the bicycle ad- 
vertising was withdrawn, and the paper 
lost thousands of dollars. 

The New York " Evening Post " some 
years ago offended the department stores 
by some utterance it made about the tar- 
iff, and they withdrew their advertising. 
The "Evening Post," instead of quietly 
backing down, started in to fight single- 
handed, calling on the public for aid. 
The personal friends of the editor, Mr. 
Godkin, and a few loyal readers rallied 
to its support, and threatened to boycott 
the stores. But the public as a whole and 
all the " Post's" esteemed contempora- 



68 COMMERCIALISM AND 

ries, as might have been anticipated, en- 
joyed the conflict from a safe distance 
and minded their own business. The de- 
partment stores not only refused to make 
terms, but in some instances carried the 
war into the enemy's territory by stop- 
ping the credit accounts of those custom- 
ers who took the "Post's" side. It was 
only after a very great financial loss and 
many years of estrangement, that most 
of the stores came back to the "Post," 
and it was long before the old relations 
of cordiality were entirely reestablished. 
The department stores are seldom or 
never referred to unfavorably by the New 
York papers. When an elevator falls 
down in an office-building and somebody 
is injured, the headlines ring to heaven. 



JOURNALISM 69 

A similar catastrophe in a department 
store is considered of hardly sufficient 
human interest to publish. The name and 
shame of a woman caught shoplifting in 
a department store can seldom be kept 
out of the papers. A department store 
caught overworking and underpaying its 
sales-girls — well, that is of no public 
concern. One of the most striking arti- 
cles I ever printed recounted the experi- 
ences of a sales-girl in one of New 
York's department stores, yet it was un- 
noticed by the New York papers, which 
are quick enough to republish and com- 
ment on such articles when we print 
them, as " Graft in Panama," "Peonage 
in Georgia," or " Race-Prejudice in 
California." 



70 COMMERCIALISM AND 

Four years ago, in our annual vacation 
number, we advised our readers to go back 
to their boyhood village, buy the old 
homestead, and take a vacation on the 
farm, abjuring the summer hotels with 
their temptations to spend money, their 
vapidities and artificialities, manufactured 
lovers' lanes, and old cats on the piazza. 
This so offended a few hotels that they 
have never since advertised in "The Inde- 
pendent. " I will not tell you their names, 
but you can find out by noticing what 
hotels are not represented in our advertis- 
ing pages. 

Three years ago I printed the life-story 
of a girl then on strike in a factory. It was 
a simple, straightforward autobiography, 
giving the employes' side pf the case. 



JOURNALISM 71 

Although we printed subsequently — as 
we are always glad to do — a statement 
from the company giving their side of the 
controversy, we must still be on their " We 
Don't Patronize " list, judging by the 
amount of advertising with which they 
have since favored us. Other papers have 
suffered still more, I understand, from the 
same factory. 

The great book-publishing firms are 
about the only class of advertisers I know 
of who do not directly or indirectly seem 
to object to have their wares damned in 
the editorial pages. Whether they have 
attained more than other men to the Chris- 
tian ideal of turning the other cheek ; 
whether they think that nobody pays any 
attention to a scathing book-review, or 



72 COMMERCIALISM AND 

whether they hold that the "best seller " 
is the offspring of hostile criticism, I do 
not know. But again and again we de- 
nounce books in our literary department 
that the publishers pay good money to 
praise in the advertising pages of the same 
issue. I know of only one prominent pub- 
lishing firm which is an exception to this 
rule in that it sometimes attempts to influ- 
ence the reviews of its books by means of 
its patronage. 

But with the small book-houses this 
happy relationship does not always exist. 
It would surprise you to know how many 
of them badger and threaten us. Some, I 
understand, have a rule not to advertise 
where their books are not indiscrimi- 
nately puffed. It is a poor Maxim, how- 



JOURNALISM 73 

ever, that won't shoot both ways ; for I am 
sorry to report that some papers adopt the 
equally bad rule of not reviewing the 
books of these firms who do not keep an 
advertising account with them. 

I once dined at a public banquet where 
the guests were both whites and negroes, 
and made some harmless and well-mean- 
ing remarks. A Philadelphia advertiser 
subsequently said he would never do 
business with a paper that employed such 
an editor. 

Last year an insurance company with- 
drew its advertising from the columns of 
a great weekly because it repeated a dis- 
agreeable truth about one of its directors. 

Recently San Francisco has gone 
through one of the most important 



74 COMMERCIALISM AND 

struggles for civic betterment ever waged 
in an American city. The whole nation 
stood at attention. The issue was clear and 
unequivocal. The story of how San Fran- 
cisco was redeeming her fair name, as 
every newspaper man knows, was sensa- 
tional enough to be featured day by day 
on the front pages of every great paper in 
the land. The Eastern dailies started in 
bravely enough, but soon cut down their 
reports until they became so meagre and 
inadequate as to cause people in the East 
to surmise that some influence hostile to 
the prosecution had poisoned the sources 
of their information. 

The Archbold letters, given to the press 
by Mr. Hearst in the late campaign, are 
further examples of commercialism in 



JOURNALISM 75 

journalism. How the Standard Oil Com- 
pany sent its certificates of deposit and 
giant subscriptions to sundry editors and 
public-opinion promoters, and how a 
member of Congress from the great state 
of Pennsylvania actually suggested to Mr. 
Archbold that it might be a good plan to 
obtain " a permanent and healthy control" 
of that very fountain-head of publicity, — 
the Associated Press, — these sinister 
transactions and suggestions have been so 
fully discussed as to need no further com- 
ment from me. 

From the standpoint of journalistic 
ethics, the only thing more reprehensible 
than selling your opinions is offering them 
for sale. This is editorial prostitution. 
The mere getting put of winter-resort 



76 COMMERCIALISM AND 

numbers, automobile numbers, financial 
numbers, and Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Ex- 
position numbers is not at all to be con- 
demned, though the motive may be com- 
mercial, as the swollen advertising pages 
in such special numbers attest. 

But what shall we suspect when a paper 
which claims a million readers devotes 
a long editorial to praising a poor play, 
and then in a subsequent issue there ap- 
pears a full-page advertisement of that 
play ? What does it mean when not a sin- 
gle Denver paper publishes a line about 
three nefarious telephone bills before 
the Colorado Legislature ? And what 
shall we think of a certain daily whose 
editor recently told me that there was on 
his desk a list three feet long of names 



JOURNALISM 77 

of prominent people who were not to be 
mentioned in his paper either favorably 
or unfavorably? 

But direct bribe-giving and bribe- 
taking are, as I have said, very rare. 
Such a procedure is too crude. If you 
should get up some palpable advertise- 
ment disguised as news, and send it 
around to the leading papers asking 
them to put it in as reading matter, 
and send you the bill, expecting them 
to swallow the bait, you would be dis- 
appointed. It is more likely to be done 
in another way. A financier invites an 
editor to go with him on a cruise in his 
private yacht to the West Indies, or 
offers to let him in on the ground floor 
in some commercial undertaking. Then, 



78 COMMERCIALISM AND 

after the editor is under obligations, fa- 
vors are asked and the editor is en- 
meshed. 

Although I have said much about 
the sordid side of journalism, and the 
temptations that we editors have to 
meet in one form or another, I do not 
want you to think that the profession 
or trade of journalism offers no scope 
for the highest moral and intellectual 
attainments. I have dwelt thus long on 
the seamy side of our profession because 
there is a seamy side, and I believe it 
does good occasionally to discuss it with 
frankness. The first step in correcting 
an evil is to acknowledge its existence. 
Were the title of this lecture " Jour- 
nalism and Progress," or "The Leader- 



JOURNALISM 79 

ship of the Press/' I could have told a 
far different and rosier, though a no less 
true story. 

But, as I approach my conclusion, let 
me give you some more pleasing ex- 
amples of the better side of " Com- 
mercialism and Journalism. " 

George Jones, the late owner of the 
New York "Times," when that paper 
made its historic fight against the 
Tweed Ring, was offered five million 
dollars by "Slippery Dick" Connolly, 
one of the gang, and an officer of the 
city government, if he would sell the 
" Times," which was then not worth over 
a million. Mr. Jones said afterwards, 
" The devil will never make a higher bid 
for me than that." Yet he declined the 



80 COMMERCIALISM AND 

bribe without a tremor. A certain re- 
ligious weekly lost a hundred thousand 
dollars for refusing to take patent-medi- 
cine advertisements — probably ten times 
what the paper was worth. "Every- 
body's Magazine," and many others of 
its class, refuse every kind of question- 
able advertising. 

Many editors and publishers scrupu- 
lously eschew politics, lest obligations be 
incurred that might limit their opportu- 
nities for public service. Some will not 
even accept dinner invitations when the 
motive is known to be the expectation 
of a quid pro quo. 

Perhaps one of the few disagreeable 
things a conscientious editor cannot hope 
to avoid is the necessity of denouncing his 



JOURNALISM 8 1 

personal friends. Yet this must be done 
again and again. Indeed, there are thou- 
sands of editors to-day who will not 
hesitate a moment to espouse the un- 
popular cause, though they know it will 
endanger their advertising receipts and 
subscription list. 

"The Independent, " for instance, 
could undoubtedly build up a great cir- 
culation in the South among white peo- 
ple if we could only cease expressing our 
disapproval of the way they mistreat 
their colored brothers. But we consider it 
a duty to champion a race, who, through 
no fault of their own, have been placed 
among us, and whom few papers, states- 
men, or philanthropists feel called upon 
to treat as friends. 



82 COMMERCIALISM AND 

There is a limit, of course, to the 
length to which a paper can go in defying 
its constituency, whether advertisers or 
subscribers. Manifestly a paper cannot be 
published without their support. But 
there are times when an editor must defy 
them, even if it spells ruin to himself and 
bankruptcy to the paper. It is rarely 
necessary, however, to go to such an ex- 
tremity as suicide. The rule would seem 
to be — and I think it can be defended on 
all ethical grounds — that under no cir- 
cumstances should an editor tell what he 
knows to be false, or urge measures he be- 
lieves to be harmful. This is a far differ- 
ent thing from telling all the truth all of 
the time, or urging all the measures he 
regards as good for mankind in season and 



JOURNALISM 83 

out. That is the attitude of the irrecon- 
cilable, and the irreconcilable is as inef- 
fectual in journalism as he is in church or 
state. Thus "The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal' ' has not as yet taken any part in fur- 
thering the great woman's suffrage move- 
ment which is sweeping over the world, 
and which ought to, but nevertheless 
does not, interest most American women. 
From Mr. Bok's point of view this pol- 
icy of silence is quite right, and the only 
one doubtless consistent with the great 
circulation of his magazine. A periodical 
which wants a million readers must ad- 
here strictly to the conventions if it would 
keep up its reputation as a safe guide for 
the multitude. This may not be the ideal 
form of leadership, but it is common sense, 



84 COMMERCIALISM AND 

which is, perhaps, more to be desired. 
"Ed" Howe, the editor of " The Atchison 
Globe," thepaper which gets closer to the 
people than any other in America, evi- 
dently admires this theory of editing, for 
he confesses, "When perplexities beset 
me and troubles thicken, I stop and ask 
myself what would Edward Bok have me 
do, and then all my difficulties dissolve." 
Despite the sinister influences that tend 
to limit the freedom of editors and taint 
the news, the efficiency, accuracy, and 
ability of the American press were never 
on such a high plane of excellence as they 
are to-day. The celerity with which news 
is gathered, written, transmitted, edited, 
published, and served on millions of break- 
fast-tables every morning in the year is one 



JOURNALISM 85 

of the wonders of the age. When great 
events happen, especially of a dramatic na- 
ture, we see newspapers at their best. Wit- 
ness the recent wreck of the steamship 
Republic. Only a few wireless dispatches 
were sent out by the heroic Binns during 
the first few hours, and yet every paper the 
next morning had columns about the dis- 
aster, all written without padding, inac- 
curacy, or disproportion. Also recall the 
way the press handled the recent Witla 
kidnaping case. Within twenty-four 
hours every newspaper reader in the Uni- 
ted States was apprised of the crime in all 
its details, and in most cases the photo- 
graph of the little boy was reproduced. 
It is the gathering of the less important 
news of the day, however, where report- 



86 COMMERCIALISM AND 

ing has deteriorated, and yellow journal- 
ism is largely responsible for this. Yellow 
journalism is a matter of typography and 
theatrics. The most sensational, and often 
the most unimportant, news is featured 
with big type, colored inks, diagrams, and 
illustrations. "A laugh or tear in every 
line ,, is the motto above the desk of the 
copy editor. The dotted line showing the 
route taken by the beautiful housemaid as 
she falls out of the tenth-story window to 
the street below adds a thrill of the yellow 
" write up." The two prime requisites for 
an ideal yellow newspaper, as that prince 
of yellow editors, Arthur Brisbane, once 
told me, are sport for the men and love for 
the women ; and as the Hearst papers have 
secured their great circulation by putting 



JOURNALISM 87 

in practice this discovery, we find the other 
papers are consciously or unconsciously 
copying them. A typographical revolu- 
tion has thus been brought about, as well 
as a general deterioration of reporting. 
Even in papers of the highest character 
an over-indulgence in headlines is coming 
into vogue, while the reporter is allowed 
too often to treat the unimportant and 
most personal events in a picturesque or 
facetious way without regard to truth- 
fulness. On a lecture trip West last winter, 
a reporter of one of the most respectable 
and influential papers in the country asked 
if I was going to attack anybody in my 
speech, or say anything that would "stir 
up the mud." When I said I hoped not, 
he replied that it would not be necessary 



88 COMMERCIALISM AND 

for him to attend the lecture. " Just give 
me the title, and the first and last sen- 
tences," said he, " and I '11 write up an ac- 
count of it at my desk in the office." 

Sometimes, by this method of report- 
ing, a serious injury is done to the indi- 
vidual. A reporter on the New York 
"Times" wrote up last winter a sensa- 
tional account of the marriage of the 
head worker of the University Settlement 
on the East Side to a young leader of one 
of the girls' classes. The marriage was per- 
formed by one of the officers of the So- 
ciety of Ethical Culture, who are ex- 
pressly authorized by the New York 
legislature to officiate on such occasions. 
And yet the reporter called the marriage 
an "ethical" one, putting the word 



JOURNALISM 89 

" ethical " in quotation marks and also 
the word "Mrs.," to which the bride 
was morally and legally entitled, imply- 
ing that the marriage was irregular, and 
indicated a tendency towards free love. 
Though many letters of protest were 
written to the "Times" about this, the 
" Times " made no editorial apology for 
a breach of journalistic ethics, which 
should have cost the reporter who wrote 
the article and probably the managing 
editor who passed it their positions. 

It is this lack of sense of the fitness of 
things that would make the average re- 
porter scribble away for dear life, if, when 
the President's message on the tariff was 
being read in Congress, a large black cat 
had happened to walk up the aisle of the 



9 o COMMERCIALISM AND 

House and jumped on the back of Speaker 
Cannon. Such an occurrence, I venture to 
say, would have commanded more space 
in the next morning's papers than any 
pearls cast before Congress by the Presi- 
dent in his message. 

The yellows, however, despite their 
" night special " editions issued before 
nine o'clock in the morning, their fake 
pictures and fake sensations, have come 
to stay. They serve yellow people. For- 
merly the masses had to choose between 
such papers as " The Atlantic Monthly," 
"The Nation," the New York " Tri- 
bune/ ' and nothing. No wonder they 
chose nothing. In the yellow press they 
now have their own champion, — a press 
that serves them, represents them, leads 



JOURNALISM 91 

them, and exploits them, as Tammany 
Hall does its constituency. Of course they 
give it their suffrage. The hopeful thing 
is that yellow readers don't stay yellow- 
always. When a man begins to read he is 
apt to think. When he begins to think 
there is no telling where he will end, — 
maybe by reading the London "Times" 
or the " Edinburgh Review." In New 
York the yellow papers, while they still 
have an enormous circulation, are losing 
their influence as a political and moral 
force. Evidently as soon as yellow peo- 
ple begin to use their wits they first apply 
them to the yellow journals. 

The daily newspapers, however, both 
yellow and white, like natural monopo- 
lies, are public necessities. The people 



92 COMMERCIALISM AND 

must have the news, and therefore, the 
predatory interests, whether political or 
financial, have been quick to get control 
of the people's necessity. " Read the com- 
ments on the Payne Tariff Bill," says the 
" Philadelphia North American " in its 
issue of March 20, " and every sane, well- 
informed American discounts the com- 
ment of the Boston papers regarding raw 
and unfinished materials that affect the 
factories of New England. Most of the 
Philadelphia criticism counts for no more 
than what New Orleans says of sugar, or 
Pittsburg of steel, or San Francisco of 
fruits, or Chicago of packing-house pro- 
ducts. And it is common knowledge that 
what almost every big New York paper 
says is an echo of Wall Street." 



JOURNALISM 93 

The weeklies and monthlies, however, 
are not, like the dailies, necessities. They 
have to attract by their merits alone. 
They must at all hazards therefore retain 
the people's confidence in their integrity, 
enterprise, and leadership. Whether this 
be the true explanation or not, there is at 
least no doubt that the moral power of 
the American periodical press has been 
transferred from the dailies to the month- 
lies and weeklies. The monthlies and 
weeklies have also the advantage of being 
national in circulation instead of local, and 
therefore less subject to local and personal 
influence. They are also preserved, bound 
or unbound, and not thrown away on the 
day of publication like the daily paper. 
At all events, the weeklies and month- 



94 COMMERCIALISM AND 

lies have been the pioneers and prime 
movers in the great moral renaissance 
now dawning in America. Moral strife 
always brings out moral leaders. Where 
will you find in the daily press to-day 
twenty editors to compare with Richard 
Watson Gilder and Robert Underwood 
Johnson, of " The Century/' Henry M. 
Alden and George Harvey,of "Harper's/' 
Ray Stannard Baker and Ida M. Tarbell, 
of "The American," Lyman Abbott and 
Theodore Roosevelt, of" The Outlook," 
Walter Page, of "The World's Work," 
Albert Shaw,of the "Review of Reviews," 
Paul E. More, of " The Nation," S. S. 
McClure,of "McClure's," Erman Ridg- 
way, of " Everybody's," Bliss Perry, of 
"The Atlantic Monthly," Norman Hap- 



JOURNALISM 95 

good, of " Collier's," Edward Bok, of 
"The Ladies' Home Journal," George 
H. Lorimer, of the " Saturday Evening 
Post," Robert M. La Follette, of " La 
Follette's," William J. Bryan, of "The 
Commoner," or Shailer Matthews, of 
"The World To-day"? These are the 
men — and there are more, too, I might 
name — who came forward with their 
touch upon the pulse of the nation when 
the day of the daily newspaper as a leader 
of enlightened public opinion had waned. 
As a Philadelphia daily has admitted, "A 
vacuum had been created. They filled it." 
Let me quote from a recent editorial, 1 
which seems to sum up this transforma- 
tion most clearly : — 

1 The Independent^ Oct. I, 1 908. 



96 COMMERCIALISM AND 

"The modern American magazines have 
now fallen heir to the power exerted formerly 
by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and 
daily newspapers in the moulding of public 
opinion, the development of new issues, and 
dissemination of information bearing on cur- 
rent questions. The newspapers, while they 
have become more efficient as newspapers, 
that is, more timely, more comprehensive, 
more even-handed, more detailed, and, on the 
whole, more accurate, have relinquished, or 
at least subordinated, the purpose of their 
founders, which was generally to make people 
think with the editor and do what he wanted 
them to do. The editorials, once the most im- 
portant feature of a daily paper, are rarely so 
now. They have become in many cases mere 
casual comment, in some have been altogether 
eliminated, in others so neutralized and in- 
offensive that a man who had bought a cer- 



JOURNALISM 97 

tain daily for a year might be puzzled if you 
asked him its political, religious, and sociologi- 
cal views. He would not be in doubt if asked 
what his favorite magazine was trying to ac- 
complish in the world. Unless it is a mere 
periodical of amusement it is likely to have a 
definite purpose, even though it be nothing 
more than opposition to some other maga- 
zine. If a magazine attacks Mrs. Eddy, an- 
other gallantly rushes to her defense. If one 
gets to seeing things at night, the other be- 
comes anti-spirituous. If the first acquires the, 
muck-raking habit, the complementary organ 
publishes an 'Uplift Number' that oozes op- 
timism from every paragraph. The modern 
editor does not sit in his easy-chair, writing 
essays and sorting over the manuscripts that 
are sent in by his contributors. He goes 
hunting for things. The magazine staffis com- 
ing to be a group of specialists of similar views, 



98 COMMERCIALISM AND 

but diverse talents, who are assigned to work 
up a particular subject, perhaps a year or two 
before anything is published, and who spend 
that time in travel and research among the 
printed and living sources of information." 

Now my conclusion of the whole 
question under discussion is this : While 
commercialism is at present the greatest 
menace to the freedom of the press, just 
as it is to the freedom of the Church and 
the University, yet commercialism as it 
develops carries within itself the germ of 
its own destruction. For no sooner is its 
blighting influence felt and recognized 
than all the moral forces in the com- 
munity are put in motion to accomplish 
its overthrow, and as the monthlies and 
weeklies have thrived by fighting com- 



JOURNALISM 99 

mercialism, so it is reasonable to suppose 
that the dailies will regain their editorial 
influence when they adopt the same atti- 
tude. 

I know of only four ways to hasten 
the time when commercialism will cease 
to be a reproach to our papers. 

First. The papers can devote them- 
selves to getting so extensive a circula- 
tion that they can ignore the clamor of 
the advertisers. But this implies a certain 
truckling to popularity, and the best edi- 
tors will chafe under such restrictions. 

Second. The papers can become en- 
dowed. That others have thought of this 
before, Mr. Andrew Carnegie can doubt- 
less testify. There would be many ad- 
vantages, however, of having several great 



ioo COMMERCIALISM AND 

endowed papers in the country. The same 
arguments that favor endowed theatres 
or universities apply equally to papers. 
We need some papers that can say what 
ought to be said irrespective of anybody 
and everybody, and which can serve as 
examples to other papers not so fortu- 
nately circumstanced. But manifestly the 
periodical industry as a whole is much 
too large to be endowed, and the few 
papers that may be endowed by private 
capital, or by the Government, would 
have only a limited influence on the in- 
dustry as a whole. Our government now 
publishes a weekly paper in Panama, 
which takes no advertisements, and is 
furnished free to every government em- 
ployee on the Isthmus. It is a model 



JOURNALISM 101 

paper in many respects, but manifestly 
its example is not apt to be followed ex- 
tensively before the dawn of the Coop- 
erative Commonwealth. It may be that 
the practice newspapers conducted by the 
schools of journalism connected with our 
great universities will raise the standard 
by making their chief object the publi- 
cation of accurate and reliable news. 

Third. The papers can combine in a 
sort of trust. Take the Theatrical Syndi- 
cate, for instance, whose theatres could 
not be kept open a week without news- 
paper publicity. The Theatrical Syndi- 
cate's policy seems to be to single out any 
paper that becomes too critical and give it 
an absent-advertisement treatment. At 
the present moment this medicine is being 



102 COMMERCIALISM AND 

prescribed in several of our large cities. 
But let all the publishers form a publishers' 
trade union as it were, and whenever an ad- 
vertisement is withdrawn, appoint a com- 
mittee of investigation, and if the com- 
mittee reports that the withdrawal of the 
advertisement was done for any improper 
reason, then let all the papers refuse to 
print an advertisement of the play, or allow 
their critics to mention it until the matter 
is satisfactorily adj usted. This would bring 
the advertisers to their knees in a moment. 
The papers have the whip hand if they 
will only combine, but they are all so jeal- 
ous of one another that probably any real 
combination is a long way off. Still there 
are indications of a gentleman's agree- 
ment in the air, for all other interests are 



JOURNALISM 103 

combining and they will be forced to 
follow suit. 

And what will the public do then, poor 
thing ? A newspaper trust will certainly 
be as inimical to the public welfare as any 
other combination doing business in the 
fear of the Sherman law. Indeed it would 
be more dangerous, for a periodical trust 
would practically control the diffusion 
of intelligence, and that no self-respect- 
ing democracy would or should allow. 
But this is borrowing trouble from the 
future. 

Fourth and last. We come back to the 
old, old remedy, which if sincerely applied 
would solve most all the ills of society. 
I refer to personal integrity, to character. 
Despite what may be said to the contrary, 



104 COMMERCIALISM AND 

integrity is the only thing in the news- 
paper profession, as in life itself, that really 
counts. 

The great journalists of the past, what- 
ever their personal idiosyncrasies, have all 
been men of integrity; the great journal- 
ists of to-day are of the same sterling 
mould ; and the journalistic giants of to- 
morrow — and the journalists of the fu- 
ture will be giants — must also be men of 
inflexible character. 

There has never been a time in all his- 
tory when so many and so important 
things were waiting to be done as to-day. 
The newest school of sociology tells us 
that the human race in its spiral progress 
onward and upward through sweat and 
blood, misery and strife, has at last reached 



JOURNALISM 105 

the point where, emerging from the con- 
trol of the blind forces of an inexorable 
environment, it is about to take its destiny 
into its own control and actually shape its 
future. From now on, evolution is to be a 
psychical rather than a physical process. 
The world is on the threshold of a new 
era. We see the first faint dawn of univer- 
sal peace and of the brotherhood of man. 
Fortunate that editor whose privilege 
It is to share in pointing out the way. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



DEC 13 191M 



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